[B]***UPDATE 2***[/B]
Before anything else is said, I must say beforehand: I'm sorry I can't really display these images any better, but I didn't want to have everyone following links; since garry has taken away media tags, the images are simply [I]there[/I]. Hopefully they are still displayed decently to people. (If you can't tell, I loved media tags)
So, its been awhile, hasn't it? I've hit a couple massive snags that I recovered from, but they ate a bit of time out of the project each time. That said, I've still been making some major progress in multiple areas. I'll explain some others, but first to explain the following screenshots. Basically, up until now you've seen a single nation; that nation being one of fertile grounds and decent climate. The following presents the desert nation. It has an egyptian workings to it that'll be seen far more prominently later on. Also note that the following are pretty WIP, as a lot of that cobble will be replaced by sandstone. Now, a little background for this update's screenies.
This city was once the centre of a once-great empire. This empire spans the entirely of the world (once I get around to building the entirely of the world, that is) and ruins can be found everywhere. The city itself contains a shine considered to be the most holy of all (in the pictures, this is the area without the staircase). Beneath the holy shrine is the burial grounds for rulers of both the great empire and of the lands conquered by the great empire. This city's value in the world of Terra Scindenda is identical to Jerusalem or Mecca in our own world in terms of holiness. Each pillar in the underground is the tomb of a single ruler and his wife(wives). It can be thought of as the rulers of the past continuing to hold up the people.. literally. Now, the pictures only depict the shrine and the entrance to the burial ground, and as said before, very WIP. The center dome will end up being the very center of the city when fully built. Also, while the underground may look absolutely massive, it is only a bit wider than the surface area, and it is actually shorter in length than the area depicted above the ground. Lastly, I want to say this again. This city is not part of the of the same nation as the villages and town from the previous OP and update 1. Along with that, this new nation isn't bursting to the brim with gold and lapis (a material that is very important in this world.. more on that later), its just this city, and really just a few important structures/areas.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Q7cYF.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/HynI8.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/u5sRC.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/JiKaK.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Z1eV3.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/eV05y.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/NDgbX.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/7JBWN.png[/img]
Well, tell me what you think!
P.S. right click > view the images below for a bigger version.
Update 1:
[quote=update 1]
[B]**UPDATE 1**[/B]
I have the first two village done, and mostly connected to the town.
Village to the SE:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/0DQqQ.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/dYrnW.jpg[/img]
This is a small farming village. It lacks a church as its only 1/4th of a (minecraft) day away by road. More explained in the follow up section.
Village to the NW:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Fsd7b.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/58orI.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/9jdCy.jpg[/img]
First off, I had an intense amount of fun making this village, including multiple lava pits that existed naturally causing large spread fire and mass tree death. This village is just like the former one, being built on an agriculture-based need. These two villages contain fortifications because they are on the frontier of another empire, to be built at a later date. Assuming continued progress, you aren't going to be seeing as many villages with these types of defenses in the future. In fact, a lot of them won't be as big as these, either. Also, I've been doing research into the amount of farmland needed to feed the population I "have" now and the population I expect. I gotta say, you wouldn't see a single tree right now in these pictures if I was trying to match realistic farmland requirements. So, I'm working off the basis that magic helps grow crops faster and people aren't eating as much as they would have some 800 years ago.
Please post any thoughts/criticisms/ideas so I can improve for later portions.
[/quote]
Original post:
[quote=OP]
[I]Terra scindenda[/I], latin for "the cutting of earth," is a project I've been working on for the last two weeks. If any of you remember, back in the v30 era of megathreads, I had created a project dubbed MineCraft Nations; it was meant to be a nation-scale project. Well, I ended up killing the project because of the rapidity of notch's updates, along with the premise that biomes were coming out "soon." Biomes ended up taking two more months to be introduced, and even more months to be refined.
Well, two weeks ago I finally felt like I had the time needed to commit to the project, and also felt that notch wouldn't add any mind-blowing changes to the world gen any time soon. Thus, I started my project. Sadly, MCN was taken by another individual/group, so I've had to drop that name. But, I figured a new name was needed anyways, so I hit up the latin. I'm also hoping to write a story about it, too. I've posted some updates in the "what are you working on" thread, but I feel that the first town on the long road my project offers is finished, and so I've decided to switch over to a thread, so that I can just update one post continuously with updates for the various FPers I know.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/DLuom.png[/img]
First I had to pick a location. I ended up with what you see above, which probably doesn't look like much. I might go to my copy of the original and take a few screenies, but basically its a U shaped mountain with one end of the U being a mountain-sized pillar and the other end curving back around to form a bowl, which I made into a lake. The middle of the U itself is a valley which continues to decrease in height as one heads away from the U until it levels off around 300 blocks away.
Here is the progress I made from near-start to near-finish.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/zu3D8.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/0JsdO.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aw0n3.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/VvrJV.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/JE9qe.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/NX7VR.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ccEXC.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/0NAl0.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/h2thi.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/OjdGJ.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/dcfGG.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/SQdAI.jpg[/img]
As one can see, my progress starts with a simple fort, expanding into a fort with a moat. But, I then expand to the right, adding the first two of the cities buildings: a post office and mayoral residence. I then add the temporary quarter and greater market place. I then complete the walls, add the church and other residential quarters of the town, along with three more guard posts and the courthouse.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/2buYX.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/R7moj.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/euJRO.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/EzyLh.jpg[/img]
That is the completed city itself. As stated earlier, its taken two weeks with me devoting an hour here and there, with more time given on the weekends. It isn't meant to be spectacularly detailed; it is meant to be slightly cramped streets in a city on the outer rims of a nation, with everything a city needs to survive and function, minus a food source; that will be located to the north in the form of a series of villages and large swaths of farm land.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/syd2k.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/O7CmO.jpg[/img]
The first is an arena, which is located past the gate horizontal from the mayor's residence. The second picture is the lake, located behind the fort.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Z0NaD.png[/img]
The end carto of the town.
The thing I'd like most is for criticism/suggestions of what I can do better on for the next town, which will be similar to this, in that it'll be on the outer rim of the same nation, bordering the same nation this one does. The three main things I'm aware people would like changed are: a bigger castle, a better texture pack, and less cobble. I'm trying to keep this as realistic building materials as possible, which in my mind so far has been cobble: stone and mortar. I just don't see many pictures where they've smoothed the stone on castles or city walls. But I'm always open to suggestions. And sorry about the texture pack; it looks nice up close and that is why I've kept it.
[B]Warning: big image[/B]
[url]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25877217/1.png/1.png[/url]
An older carto.
Thanks for checking out my work so far.
[/quote]

That is amazing. :iia: x2000

Looks nice, will be neat to see this thing make progress.

This is ridiculously great

tinhead goes above and beyond again

Why don't you become an architect with [url=http://www.nationcraft.co.uk]NationCraft[/url]? We're looking for someone with your kind of talent, skill and commitment.

Holy shit.

Nice job, reminds me of Broville.

That's amazing

What's this, Assassin's Craft?

Oh wow, I remember seeing this in some other threads and wondering what happened to it.
:iia:

[QUOTE=Hezzy;29094852]Why don't you become an architect with [url=http://www.nationcraft.co.uk]NationCraft[/url]? We're looking for someone with your kind of talent, skill and commitment.[/QUOTE]
I was talking to Guniv about that and sent you an email.
And thank you guys for the great replies!

What texture pack, I'm curious.

Texture pack:[url]http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1021&t=136785[/url]
And I also use Mipmapping with it: [url]http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=128995[/url]
along with the grass mod: [url]http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1032&t=100771[/url]
But the mipmap mod doesn't work with 1.4_01 yet, so I'm stuck on 1.3 right now.

Incredible work but that texture pack doesn't tile for shit

I remember the giant fort you started on my server back in punchopolis, good times.

That's fantastic!

You know.
At first I was like :iia:
Then I thought you made it all with mods/tools.
(ye, probably months to make it legitemately, I am just attached to little stuff I made without ever using any sort of inv edit or world edit)
Still great deal of great job.

[QUOTE=Tokagero;29112041]You know.
At first I was like :iia:
Then I thought you made it all with mods/tools.
(ye, probably months to make it legitemately, I am just attached to little stuff I made without ever using any sort of inv edit or world edit)
Still great deal of great job.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I definitely couldn't have built this or any of the following projects that will come without a bit of help from some editing tools. But, allow to me to explain the why to that.
The resources aren't the biggest problem, it is the design and building process. If I built the church entirely in-game and without the use of tools, I would be forced to design the entire thing out on paper first, as to remove accidentally placing hundreds of blocks just to dislike the design. That adds more time to the process just to draw it all out, and then couple that with the mistakes that come with building, and I could see myself one block off; an unacceptable flaw that would require the complete rebuilding of the structure. Coupled with that is the simple fact that I've been playing minecraft on a regular basis since May 2009, two weeks after Minecraft first went public. As much as I love every aspect of it, I've done the resource gathering, the designing, and the messing up plenty of times. When the time comes that one wants to scale up the projects to the size of what I am currently aiming for, time management is key. I know some people dislike the use of external factors to accomplish a task or project, but in my mind the goal isn't how it was gone about being built, but that it looks quite awesome and polished at the end. I hope that explains why I went with the usage of tools; not to be lazy, but to accomplish the greater goal.
[QUOTE=Profanwolf;29107794]I remember the giant fort you started on my server back in punchopolis, good times.[/QUOTE]
I really do miss that one. The castle was the first time I went with the stacking-style of castle building; a style that turned out to look quite nice.

tinhead50 said I have to post here so he's not double posting.
[editline]11th April 2011[/editline]
He says he looks pompous, but he's actually a straight-up G.
[editline]11th April 2011[/editline]
But seriously, tinhead50 and Moddington (still don't know his FP name) were the two best creators in Minecraft I had the pleasure to work with.

[QUOTE=venn177;29120740]tinhead50 said I have to post here so he's not double posting.
[editline]11th April 2011[/editline]
He says he looks pompous, but he's actually a straight-up G.
[editline]11th April 2011[/editline]
But seriously, tinhead50 and Moddington (still don't know his FP name) were the two best creators in Minecraft I had the pleasure to work with.[/QUOTE]
You're evil but you get the job done, thanks.
I just wanted to post one of the four villages that feed the town.
[media]http://i.imgur.com/0DQqQ.jpg
[url]http://i.imgur.com/dYrnW.jpg[/url][/media]
This as well as the other three will feed the town.

[QUOTE=tinhead50;29120850]You're evil but you get the job done, thanks.
I just wanted to post one of the four villages that feed the town.
[media]http://i.imgur.com/0DQqQ.jpg
[url]http://i.imgur.com/dYrnW.jpg[/url][/media]
This as well as the other three will feed the town.[/QUOTE]
Spectacular really just amazing it's nice to see that you can get stuff done, really gives me hope that I might finish my project one day

Looks fucking spectacular! The only nitpick I have is that the streets between the houses look a bit narrow

[QUOTE=VaSTinY;29127233]Looks fucking spectacular! The only nitpick I have is that the streets between the houses look a bit narrow[/QUOTE]
Streets in Medieval towns were very narrow. I think they look good.

Any chance we could download it once you're done? :smile:

How do those fields work? I thought they had to be within 8 blocks of water.

There'ws probably water underneath or something.

[QUOTE=ManningQB18;29132714]How do those fields work? I thought they had to be within 8 blocks of water.[/QUOTE]
You don't need water to grow wheat, it just speeds the process. And Oscario, water under wheat doesn't speed the process, the water can only be 4 blocks away and must be on level or 1 block above the wheat.

I need to do something like this. This is epic fucking win

I've attempted something like this, it's a mansion/castle on a hill overlooking a small residential area.